Acer sends AI to give doctors a helping hand

A gas-powered refrigerator used to keep polio vaccines cold in a remote part of West Africa has become a lesson in the gap that can remain between useful technology and the people it is meant to help.

“I learned this lesson that with technology and humans, there needs to be a bridge,” said Dr Allen Lien, chairman and CEO of Acer Medical, during a keynote last week at IFA 2026, Europe’s largest consumer technology fair, in Berlin, Germany.

Lien, who has worked at Acer for three years, previously practised medicine in several countries, including 10 years in Africa. He said that while providing community service in Burkina Faso, his team worked in an area without electricity, running water or roads.

The team was trying to control polio, but the vaccines had to be stored in a cold-chain environment. A gas bottle-powered refrigerator provided the required cold storage despite the lack of electricity.

“We have the vaccine, we have the technology, but still the virus was circulating without being controlled,” said Lien.

The experience shaped an approach he now applies at Acer Medical: technology needs to reach the people and places where it can make a difference.

“So this is what we’re trying to do,” he said. “We’re trying to introduce the technology where it’s most needed through the bridge.”

The same challenge applies to AI, according to Lien. He said the barriers to using AI effectively in healthcare can be social, behavioural and cultural rather than technical.

“How can we effectively harness AI for healthcare is the key, and this is where Acer Medical makes a difference.”

Acer Medical has developed hardware, software and healthcare solutions over the past eight years. The company initially applied predictive AI to areas such as early detection, and has since expanded into generative AI and large language models.

One application embeds agentic AI into a hospital’s electronic medical record system to reduce the documentation workload placed on doctors. The company is applying AI to drug development too, including using the technology to design a cancer neoantigen therapy.

Continuous patient monitoring is another focus for Acer Medical, with the company combining AI and connected devices.

Lien said someone who has suffered a stroke faces a 40% chance of having another within a year. Preventing a second stroke can require continued monitoring of blood sugar, blood lipids and blood pressure, along with other risk factors.

He said a nurse may have to call a patient and collect this information, taking around 30 minutes per person each day.

“Now we can apply this AI to alleviate the burden of this case management on the nurse, to prevent the stroke.”

The company is working with Fujitsu on another system that monitors changes in a person’s movement over time.

Ageing or injury can cause changes that may be too subtle for a doctor to notice during an individual consultation. According to Lien, the system can monitor changes in the knee joint, centre of mass and walking stability over time.

“We can give you a longitudinal chart, like a radar chart, to make comparisons.”

This information could help doctors identify disease progression earlier and provide better care.

Closing the medical divide

Acer Medical is applying AI to unequal access to specialist healthcare, an issue Acer CEO Jason Chen describes as the “medical divide”.

Indonesia was highlighted in an example. The country has thousands of islands, but most specialists are based in major cities on only a few of them. This leaves patients elsewhere without the same access to specialised care.

Lien said: “We can deploy our AI where doctors cannot travel, but the AI can travel there to fill the gap.”

He said the company wants to use such systems to make healthcare more accessible and improve health equity.

Chen said Acer Medical has received type approvals in multiple countries, while hundreds of hospitals and medical institutions have implemented its solutions.

Lien said: “This is just the beginning, and our ambition is very simple. We want to bring intelligence to where care is most needed.”

*Jason Bannier is a data analyst at World Wide Worx and deputy editor of Gadget.co.za. Follow him on Bluesky at @jas2bann.